PLATFORMS

Your Account Has Been Suspended

This vulnerability has hurt many people

Source: Unsplash

I wish Facebook had the decency to send a similar message when they suspended my account years ago. Instead, I found out the hard way. One morning, Facebook booted me out of the app, and I couldn’t sign back in.

There was no warning. They provided no explanation.

I lost access to my Facebook business groups and pages. So, I called one of my moderators and asked them to message the groups and let people know what happened. Note: Always have people you trust as additional admins and moderators for your online communities.

I was locked out for about a week before Facebook suddenly reactivated my account with no explanation. To this day, I still don’t know why it happened.

My best guess is that a competitor falsely reported me for something, and Facebook suspended my account while they investigated. But I’ll never know for sure, so there’s nothing I can do to prevent it from happening again.

I vowed never to let myself be that vulnerable ever again:

• I created a Slack team for my community that week and migrated over as quickly as possible. A few months ago, I closed my Facebook groups (fool me once…).